If you see me walking down the street, don't walk on by (apologies to Burt Bacharach), especially if you see me walking with one of my two girls.

You see, last Saturday across the country and anywhere else there may be Girl Scouts, the ubiquitous cookie sale kicked off.

Mention Girl Scout cookies and you either get a scoff and something like, "I'm on a diet," or you get the wild-eyed look of an addict who can't wait too long for a box of Somoas.

For me, I suppose I'll have to admit that I kind of roll my eyes, sigh and shrug my shoulders. Yeah, it's cookie sale time again. Whoopy.

See, it's not that I don't like the cookies. And it's not that I don't support the Girl Scouts — I have two of them after all. It's just that, well, let's just say if you see a parent with a Girl Scout, know that while the Scout is selling, the parent is probably wringing his or her hands, anxious over how many boxes of Thin Mints will be sold.

Yeah, the object here is for the girls to sell a lot of cookies. The money, after all, goes toward funding the organization, and that's important.

Last year, according to the Girl Scout cookie information sheet I have on my desk, there were 1, 458,000 boxes sold to cookie-hungry members of the public. And each troop gets between 60 and 70 cents per box that goes toward the troops activities and those are important because they help instill a lot of good qualities in the girls and all that.

But again, it's the story behind the cookies and the Scouts that I'm talking about here. It's the story of the beleaguered parent who, while cheering his or her Scouts on as they sell hundreds of boxes of cookies, is rubbing tired feet after hours of walking the neighborhoods and who counts the days until those boxes must be picked up.

Because, you see, if nearly 1.5 million boxes were sold last year, that many had to be delivered to people. And while the Girl Scouts are the ones responsible for going to the door, handing off the boxes and collecting the money, it's the parent who is behind the wheel, or on the sidewalk, anxiously praying that all of those people who bought all those hundreds of boxes will be home and will remember they bought 10 Thin Mints, or something like that.

The reason for this is, well, it might come out of the parents' pockets, like it did a number of years ago, but I won't bore you with the details.

Just suffice it to say that while you're licking your chops in anticipation of Thin Mints, Somoas, Trefoiles, Lemon Chalet Cremes, Sugar Free Chocolate Chip, Do-Si-Dos, Tagalongs and All Abouts, there is a parent somewhere who is pulling his or her hair out at the thought of delivering all those boxes.

But don't let me discourage you from buying the cookies, as if I could do that. This is about the girls and their efforts and all, and that's the most important thing.

I'm just asking that, when you see me, or any other parent walking down the street, don't walk on by; don't just assume we're strolling pleasantly through a mid-winter day, enjoying 40 degrees for the heck of it. Nope, we're out there, supporting the Girl Scouts so you can have a freezer-full of Thin Mints to last you one more year.